A quick update as I continue to be riveted by the events in Egypt: Zahi Hawass said on State TV that he examined the museum this morning and found that some looters had indeed broken in at some point last night before the building was secured.

“I felt deeply sorry today when I came this morning to the Egyptian Museum and found that some had tried to raid the museum by force last night,” Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said on Saturday.

“Egyptian citizens tried to prevent them and were joined by the tourism police, but some (looters) managed to enter from above and they destroyed two of the mummies,” he said.

They ripped off their heads, to be precise. The mummies appear to have been from the Pharaonic period. The ticket office and gift shop were also stripped bare. I’m guessing looters were looking for cash and easily salable items, hence the focus on the museum administration rather than on the collection of 120,000 priceless ancient artifacts.

An AP camera crew allowed inside the museum reported seeing at least ten broken display cases and the artifacts they had contained scattered and damaged. All of them were found in the building, however, and Hawass is optimistic that the broken pieces can be restored.

The NDP building continues to burn, but firefighting crews are now handling the blaze. Hawass remains deeply concerned that the burning building could damage the museum if it collapses, and even if it does remain standing, between the fire, smoke and now water there are many ways the museum and its contents could suffer from the proximity.

Elsewhere in the country, other ancient sites and museums are also in peril. Hawass says the army has yet to answer his call to protect sites in areas where people have been evacuated. There have been local efforts to ensure the security of Egypt’s heritage. Authorities erected barriers and put guards around the temple of Karnak in Luxor, and there’s a ring of tanks, no less, around Luxor’s museum.

This entry was posted
on Saturday, January 29th, 2011 at 3:32 PM and is filed under Looting, Museums, Social policy.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Sadly, mummies are still widely trafficked on the black market. People get busted trying to smuggle them all the time, from Peru to the Middle East. Whole mummies are more “desirable,” of course, but a head is a lot easier to conceal and still provides a lot of impact for buyers.

Whose heads were ripped off? Do we have their names? (They were people, after all).
I guess once you get to be 2000 – 4000 years dead and you’re preserved like a lab rat, you become a spectacle to be sold rather than a person to be respected.

If you mean this picture, I don’t think it’s Ramses II’s head. The cheekbones are far less prominent, the bottom lip is receded and the overall face shape seems round rather than long and angular.

(Comments won't nest below this level)

Comment by Sonaya

2011-02-01 16:50:11

This is not Ramses I-II-IV-IV-IX. I don’t even think those are mummies from the Royal Mummy-room. I have been there 2 weeks ago and I don’t recognize these mummies. Maybe those are mummies from the “storage-room” (where they keep mummies and things without showing it)?

I think that it is sad for looters to destroy things in museums like it is bad enough that these mummy’s were taken from their original resting place to be viewed by the world but then again we would never know about their life in the past.With Egyptians,pharaohs,mummies, and artifacts.